Trap Review: Trapped in a Game of Plot Twister
by Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
A quarter century after The Sixth Sense melted people’s brains, people have become accustomed to what a M. Night Shyamalan movie feels like. Though nothing recent has quite lived up to that early hype that garnered unfair comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock, Shyamalan has found firmer footing in the last decade after a cooling off period critically. His latest film, Trap, is another thriller with a unique premise, which you can almost always count on with Shyamalan, but with mixed results, something else you can almost always count on with Shyamalan.
Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a Philly dad taking his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donaghue) to a concert to see her favorite artist, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). Cooper seems to be the only one who notices an increased police presence at the concert and inquires about it at a concession stand, only to find out that there is a sting operation happening at the concert to catch a serial killer called The Butcher. Turns out that The Butcher is none other than… Cooper (don’t worry, not the movie’s twist), and, with seemingly no escape, he begins trying to work out a way to evade of the trap he has unwittingly walked into.
Most of the film takes place at the concert venue, where there is a certain level of claustrophobia and the sense that the walls are closing around Cooper. Options dwindle quickly as he looks for outs. He also must shield his increasing desperation from his teenage daughter; even though she is completely engrossed in the concert experience, she still sees that her dad is acting odd.
Harnett is an actor that Hollywood desperately tried to make into an A-list start back in the early 2000s, trying to capitalize on a teen heartthrob boomlet. Freed of the fame monster, he has had a mini renaissance with a strong supporting turn in Oppenheimer and the chance to be the lead here, and I dare say that this might be my favorite performance from him.
Getting to play a secret monster affords him the opportunity to display his acting range, essentially playing two very different roles at the same time, that of the domestic dad and the ruthless killer. And he does quite well at both.
As the father of a teenager, he subjects himself to teenage music, teenage friend squabbles and drama, and teenage lingo for the benefit of his daughter. And his flips the switch pretty smoothly when he goes over to the sociopathic killer that is trying to blend in. In fact, it’s probably a sign joke on Shyamalan’s part that a serial killer learning to be a chameleon exist in society could be incredibly adept at tolerating things for the sake of his daughter.
While Hartnett’s performance is a standout of the film, the actual story itself is where things suffer. The Hitchcock comparison for Shyamalan has always been something of an albatross for him, but this is perhaps the first film where it feels like he is so brazenly aiming for it. Hitchcock made many films with premises that were out there, think North By Northwest, The Wrong Man, Rope, or Rear Window, and then subject the premise to a stress test of sorts to thrill the audience.
Shyamalan does the same here, trying to see just how far he can stretch this premise and see how far he can get the audience to go along with him. Unfortunately, in testing the tensile strength of the story, he breaks it in the process. The entire movie is a series of Shyamalan seemingly painting himself (and Cooper) into a corner and seeing how he can get the character to slip the noose, so to speak. He blows past several convenient stopping points in the story that would have worked better, even with some dangling plot threads, like how the authorities were onto him at the concert, that could have been explained away in some tidy exposition at the end. He just doesn’t know where to stop.
Trap is an interesting premise, but one that on its face sounds difficult to sustain over the length of a feature film. Shyamalan, however, is completely undeterred by that. He gets there, but only through some serious plot contrivances. The modern-day director most known for plot twists layers on twist after twist after twist. The movie feels as much like a personal challenge on Shyamalan’s part as it does an actual movie. Because of that, it inadvertently becomes a game of brinksmanship between the director and the audience, daring us to continue to suspend our disbelief. And even a strong central performance from Josh Harnett can’t gloss over that.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars